Awakening
by Ashura
Summary: Slash, Will/Bran. "Loving bonds" he said, and the High Magic--are these why Bran's dreams are so haunted? And if they are a match for the power of the Light, Will won't have to be alone anymore.
1. unigrwydd

**Awakening**

by Ashura

pairing:  Bran/Will

disclaimer:  don't I wish I owned Will, Bran, and the whole Dark is Rising sequence?  But alas, I don't.  and I have no money to take, because I write fanfiction rather than doing things to get paid.

notes:  technically, this ought to take place in about 1984, to really keep the timeline in place from where the books left off.  I claim fanficcer's prerogative to mess with the timing, though, and just say "present day," the way one does when writing a script.  

Also, there is a bit of Welsh in places.  I couldn't avoid it completely, but tried to keep it to a minimum, since it's been a good 15 years since anyone actually asked me to say anything in Welsh, and I try to keep from butchering a perfectly lovely language.  Translations at the bottom.

****

"...Loving bonds," Merriman said, "are outside the control even of the High Magic, for they are the strongest thing on all of this earth."

            --Silver on the Tree

**part i:  unigrwydd**

The smell of sweat is terrifying.  It's not the unpleasant body odor kind of sweat that comes from honest work, or the tangy, musky kind that lingers in the air after sex.  It's nightmare sweat—panic in liquid form, oozing out of my body, stinging my skin as I flail free of the blankets that pinion me to my bed.  I've been dreaming again, and it is horrible.

4.07 in the morning.  Red numbers flashing in the dark like the eyes that followed me through my dreamscape.  For months now I've been trying to escape them, red eyes and black horses, a roiling storm of steel-grey and crimson.  They come sporadically, without reason or announcement, to haunt my sleep, and almost, almost I comprehend them.  I grasp for knowledge of them even as I flee them.

I'm shivering.  I was so hot only a few moments ago, but now the cold autumn air against my sweat-damped skin chills me.

I can't do this anymore.

The wooden floor is so cold against the bottoms of my feet, but I wrap the blanket around my shoulders and pad into the hallway.  I do this every time, and I never make it more than a few steps out my bedroom door.  It's so quiet here when I'm alone, and this time I make it all the way into the living room, as far as picking up the phone.

I stare at it, I'm not sure how long.  Whenever I wake up like this, I always think I'm going to call, but I never do.  It's been too long, and I'm not confident that we have the sort of friendship that privileges me to call in the middle of the night because of a bad dream.

But this time I'm more shaken than before, and I need to hear his voice—even if all he does is snap at me and hang up, I think, even that would jar me back into the world.  Even that would be something.

So I dial.  I have the number memorised, even though I almost never use it.  The order of the numbers is burned into my eyelids.

It rings four times, and I'm starting to think better of it, that maybe I should hang up after all.

"H—hello?"  The voice is groggy, bleary, mazed with sleep, but it's him.  My shoulders slump, but my hands are shaking.

"Will?  It's Bran Davies."

A pause, and for a moment I'm afraid that I've lost him already, or that he's fallen back asleep.  Then, with some effort, he sounds a little more awake—"Bran...it's four something in the morning."

"I know.  I'm sorry."

Maybe it's the catch in my voice, or maybe it's just because he's always been that much more perceptive than other people.  Or maybe it's just that he knows things can't be all right if I'm calling out of the blue at this hour.  "Bran, what's wrong?"

"I had a bad dream."  It sounds so absurd when I say it.  I'm afraid that now he'll cut me off—I think I would, were our places reversed.  Or maybe not.  He's the one person who's always been able to get under my skin.

"What kind of dream?"  I'm not sure if he's really interested, or soothing me, or just stalling til he can get off the phone, but I tell him.  I tell him about the red eyes and horses, and the way they chase after me, and how there are other things, a ship and a sword and a lake in the mountains that I can almost grasp but never quite manage to reach.  Images and intangible emotions form into words and tumble from my dry lips, desperate to escape. I have never allowed them to before.

"It feels like something that wants me to remember it."  It's the first time I've given words to these fears, and now I can't stop.  "I'm sorry to call you in the middle of the night like this, really I am.  But—"  The admission burns my tongue, but I have no choice.  "I...I don't have anybody else.  I mentioned it to my da once, in passing, and he went all distant on me.  There isn't anyone else but you."

And when at last I fall quiet I am sure I hear him sigh.  "It's only a dream, Bran," he says, but I hear the wistfulness in his voice that he's too weary to hide, and it seizes something in my gut and twists it.  The mellow, even timbre of his voice stirs memories I can't quite catch, that float away before I can pin them down.  

"Come see me." It slips out before I can stop it.  I don't know if I would have, anyway.

The pause is longer this time.  "I have class, Bran.  In three and a half hours, in fact."

"Come after, then."  My throat feels like it's swollen from the nervous lump forming in it.  "I need to see you."  Some part of me realises how that sounds and I wince.  

But he only says, "You do?"

I don't want to frighten him the way I'm already starting to frighten myself.  I temporise.  "I mean, if there's a way for you to get away—I know you've got things—"

"It's all right."  He cuts me off.  "I'll find a train tomorrow.  Today, rather."

I feel like all the breath and tension flood out of my body at once.  It really will be all right.  He'll help me figure this out, make sense of things again.  "Thank you."

"It's fine."  He still sounds half-asleep, but there's a dry amusement there as well, and a note of disbelief.  I don't blame him.  I haven't seen him in three years, and that was only for a Christmas—I think it's all a bit strange myself, but I don't know what else to do.

And whatever else, I know he's the only one who can help.  I'm not sure how I know it, but I do.

He yawns, and suddenly I'm not sure how long we've been quiet.  "I'm going back to sleep."

I thank him again, and apologise once more for waking him up, and we hang up.  I wander back to my bed, wavering between exhaustion and a state of excitement that makes me afraid I won't be able to fall asleep again.

But I do, faster and more quietly than I had thought.  It will all be over soon.

****

He rings me from Buckinghamshire a little after noon to tell me he's got a train.  

"You're sure you want me to come down?"  I am sure, and I try to tell him so without making a fool of myself.  Fortunately Will, like everyone else, is used to my being a bit odd at times, so he just says he'll be in Tywyn around dinnertime and if I'm going to drag him out on a moment's notice that the least I can do is feed him when he gets here.  He has a point.

"I'll come pick you up, if you want to call me when you get in."

It's funny, how I can almost see his head shaking when he declines.  "I'll get myself there, it's all right.  As long as I'm going anyway, I have this strange masochistic urge to walk the mountain a bit."

"Well, if you really want to.  More power to you."  I'm glad, though, a bit.  It means my old Welsh hills have gotten under his skin the way he's gotten under mine.  "Call though, if you think better of it before you get here."

He laughs.  "All right then.  I've got to go—see you later on, Bran."  

I spend most of the afternoon just waiting for him.  My da's gone with David Evans and John Rowlands to the sheep market in Machynlleth, and there isn't much for me to do while they're gone.  There isn't as much of a life for sheep farmers as there once was.  They know it, and I know it, and that's part of the big problem in its way.  My big problem, that is.  

I won't pretend I have any great aspirations for my life.  I can't think of a time, ever, when someone asked me "what do you want to be when you grow up, Bran?" and I had a ready answer for them.  For so much of my life, I hated living here—as would anyone, I think, who had to watch people make warding gestures against him at eleven.  But that was a long time ago, and Tywyn and I, we're used to each other now.  I'm like a part of local history.  

So I don't really want to go somewhere else, to have to get used to a whole new set of people and customs, or learn the history of somewhere else.  I like how comfortable it is, knowing everyone and having them know me.

There's a part of me that wants to have adventures, that says I can't stay here forever, and asks the rest of me in demeaning whispers--/_do you really want to stay here watching sheep for the rest of your life?  Will you really be happy with that?  Don't you want to _do _something?_/

I'm not sure about that.  I used to just keep putting the decision off, but I'm twenty now, and I begin to feel like I'm late for something.

Only now, I have other things to worry about, like getting a full night's sleep without dreaming.

Evening comes on slow, and almost I go out for a walk myself, thinking I might catch Will on his way up.  I think better of it and start cooking instead.  I'm determined to be a good host, especially since I still don't really know what it is I want from him.  Just company really, I suppose.  To wake up in the middle of the night and hear him tell me it's only a dream, instead of staring into the shadows alone.

Finally there's a loud thump on the door.  It swings open before I reach it, and in he comes—the broad grin that lights up his face and floppy brown hair that falls in his eyes, a grey jumper tied round his waist and a beat-up knapsack swung over his shoulder.  "Heyla!"  he calls, and brings the warmth with him, as if he carried the shadows of his entire huge family in his pocket.  "Smells good.  I'm not very late, am I?  I got a ride partway in, but it's a bit more of a walk than I remember it."

"Well, it's been a while since you walked it."  I take his bag and give him an awkward hug—awkward because the knapsack is thumping against my leg and he was just about to turn, not because it feels anything less than natural.  "_Croeso i cartref_." 

He blinks at me.  "What's that then?"

"Silly English.  I thought you'd have picked up a bit of Welsh by now, at least.  But I just said welcome, and come in."  That's not completely true, and really I am glad he didn't understand, because I didn't mean to say the words.   They just came out.  'Welcome home,' I'd said.  "Have you been to see your aunt yet?"

He shakes his head, regarding me with this dry sort of tolerant amusement he didn't have when we were little—he must have grown into it, and it suits him.  "She doesn't even know I'm here.  Since she's not the one who got me out of bed at four this morning, I thought I'd come see you first."

All right, I deserved that.  "Just asking.  You know where everything is, right?  Not much changed around here, I'm afraid, so make yourself at home."  I pause, halfway to taking his pack into my room.  "You know, I'm not entirely sure where you're going to sleep."

There's that not-quite-laugh again.  "We'll figure something out.  In the meantime, can I be fed soon?  Not to be too demanding, but I've had an apple and part of a sandwich, all day.  I'm hungry."

And just like that, he slides right into my life again, as if he'd never really left it, or as if there'd been a place for him left permanently open.  It was like that the first time, too, though I don't recall as much of that as I want to.  He came because he was sick, and went wandering up through the mountains, and Cafall found him there.  We fell in together—I suppose it was because we were the only two boys our age around, and both a bit of outcasts at that.  The foreigner and the freak.  

I wish I could remember our first day together.

It took years for me to get over that dog.

We talk about everything except my dreams.  I tell him all about how everyone is doing here, which isn't too exciting in the grand scheme of things, but he really seems interested.  And he tells me what he's been up to.  Will is studying medieval literatures, though he says he may change to history.  I can't explain why I think this is funny, or why it seems to fit him so well.  He goes home to his family and sings in the church choir on holidays, because he is Will, and everything about him is bizarrely comforting and ordinary.  It's only in very rare moments, when I think I see something else in his calm eyes—danger and weariness and longing, and he always changes the subject before I can say anything about it.

"Oh!" he says, after we've eaten and cleared the dishes away, and sprawled out on the floor in front of the empty fireplace.  "I almost forgot—I brought you something."  

"You did?  When'd you have time to get me anything?"  Not the most gracious thing—what I meant was probably something like thank you, you didn't need to.  He doesn't mind, just grins ruefully, fumbling around in his pocket til he comes out with a little rumpled bag.

"Actually I made it for you ages ago.  I was going to send it down for your birthday, but I'd rather give it to you in person anyway.  It isn't much."

I upend the bag into my hand.  Something small and silver drops into my palm, followed by a silver chain that pools around it.  I shift again, to dangle it from my fingers.  A charm, not big or ostentatious, just small like the cross my da wears, only it isn't.  It's a circle, quartered by a plain-armed cross, and something twists in my mind as soon as I look at it—the same sort of feeling that the dreams bring, that feeling of something that wants me to remember it, only this isn't frightening at all.  Safe, rather, like Will.

"_Diolch._  Thank you."  It wants to belong to me, I can feel it, so I fasten it around my neck.  And I like that he made something for me.  I'd forgotten, actually, that he was talented that way.  

"You're welcome."  He sounds subdued, and the silence stretches between us for a long moment while we try to find what to say next.  

"You want to go for a walk?  It's warm yet."

His smile returns, but he shakes his head.  "No, thanks.  I walked up already...tomorrow, though, if it's nice.  I'd rather be lazy tonight."

So we do.  It is warm, so we venture outside just a little past the door and lie out on the grass, and listen to the night birds and insects.  

"I'd forgotten how the wind smells, here," Will says after a while.

"Because you don't come often enough, that's why."  He doesn't answer, and I let the conversation wander where it will.  "Do you ever wish we were kids again?"

"Yes, actually," he admits quietly.  "I do, sometimes."

In the end we decide that Will and I will share my bed.  He doesn't feel right, sleeping in my da's, and neither do I.  Besides, if he's here to stop me dreaming, he ought to be close.  My bed is big enough that we don't touch each other, but still I can sense him there, in the depression of the mattress and the way the blanket doesn't fall quite normally around my shoulders.  

"_Nos da_," I whisper, as his breathing evens out into the long sighs of sleep.  The rhythm is as soothing as the knowledge that he's there, that I'm not left alone in this place to wait for nightmares to claim me.

They do, in time—I do not know how long I sleep without them, or how long I run from them.  Time, in dreams, is easy to confuse.

//_--the raven boy--_//

A sword in my hands, the blade glowing blue.  I've never had a weapon before, when they come, but I'm afraid this one isn't going to do me any good, that I will drop it before I have a chance to use it.  The riders are coming, with their fire-eyed horses.  My back is to a tree, and all I can do is stand firm as they ride, and lay about with Eirias, though I know it will not do me any good.

_Eirias?  How do I know the sword's name?_

Then the tree is shaking, and I am shaking with it, and out of the clouds someone is calling my name—

"Bran!  Bran, wake up!"  Cool hands on my face pull me out of the dream; my eyes open to Will Stanton's clear grey ones staring down at me, his straight brown hair falling, curtaining his face, brushing my cheeks.  

"Will," I whisper, "how do I know the name of the sword?"

He looks away, but not before I see something lost and longing in his eyes.  "I don't know, Bran.  Funny things happen, in dreams."

"I'm glad you're here, anyway."

His fingers brush the hollow of my throat, where the little cross charm is resting.  "Go back to sleep.  I'll watch, so you don't dream."  He twines his hand in mine, and maybe it ought to feel strange, but it doesn't.  It's like he's supposed to be here.  So I roll onto my side and nestle in again, and it's only when I can't feel his hand anymore that I realise I'm about to fall asleep again.__

*****

Welsh translations:

unigrwydd:  loneliness

Croeso i cartref:  welcome home

diolch:  thank you

nos da:  good night


	2. ymwybyddiaeth

**Awakening**

by Ashura

pairing:  Bran/Will

disclaimer:  don't I wish I owned Will, Bran, and the whole Dark is Rising sequence?  But alas, I don't.  and I have no money to take, because I write fanfiction rather than doing things to get paid.

notes for this chapter:  LEMON.  Or lime.  Sex, anyway.  (Uh, that's what you're reading this for really, though, right?)

**part ii:  ymwybyddiaeth**

When I wake up, Will is still holding my hand.  He's still asleep, so I roll over and shake him a bit.  

"_Bore da_.  Wake up, English boy.  The rest of 'em are gone, but there's still one greedy dog to feed."

"And one greedy English boy," he agrees sleepily, pulling the pillow over his head.  "You go do it.  Let me know when's breakfast."

I don't think so.  "Get up," I say again, with what I hope is unquestionable finality, and roll out of bed, and yank all the blankets off.  

The pillow comes flying at my head.  It brushes my ear and tumbles onto the floor.  "Welshmen know nothing about hospitality," Will declares grumpily.  

"You're just being lazy.  Even when you were sick you helped out around here, so no lying about in bed now!"  I hear the creak of the bed behind me, the sounds of his rising, as I turn and start pulling on clothes.  Still white and black—stark emphatic non-colours, that stand out against the non-colour of the rest of me.  He told me once that he thought I did it on purpose.  He was right, of course.  He's right about most things.

He follows me outside, and I whistle for the dog.  "Arian!  _Tyrd yma_!"  She fades into sight, out of the morning mist, my graceful silver hound.  

"New dog?" Appreciative, Will sounds, but a bit tentative as well.  

"That's right.  Got her last year, someone gave her to me."  I don't feel like explaining any more than that.  I know the reason for the strangeness in his voice.  Arian looks like Cafall.  I've had other dogs between, but Will remembers Cafall.  He understands, the way there was never another dog quite like that one.  The same way John Rowlands understood, when he gave Arian to me.  "Lovely, isn't she?"

She wanders up to him, cautious, and he lets her get a sniff of him before she's comfortable enough to eat.  "It's all right," I tell her, "he's an old friend."  She seems to have come to this conclusion on her own, and he gives her a pat on the flank, and she turns to her breakfast.  

"Not a lot of dogs around that colour, I didn't think," he says.

"No," I agree.  "Not many."  That's all either of us say about it, before we go inside.

We have tea and eggs and toast with cheese, and linger over it for a good while longer than either of us would have, normally.  But there is nothing today that we need to do, except keep one another company.  We decide to walk down to see Jen Evans, who would probably not forgive Will if he came all the way here and didn't stop to see her, even if it was me he was visiting.  She greets him with a broad, warm smile, and a twinkling in her bright eyes—but she gives me a look, when she hugs him, like she knows there's something wrong.  

"I wouldn't have expected to be seeing you here!" she announces, drawing him inside, measuring him up.  "Have you got a holiday after all then?  I never did keep up with the schedules, much."

"Just a little one, Aunt Jen," he says, laughing.  "I owe Bran a visit, that's all.  We started missing each other."

Her laughter bubbles out of her.  "Now I'm not sure that bodes well—two young men, as tight as you two were—I'll have both your hides if you start causing trouble!"

We both force ourselves to look very, very innocent.  "Trouble?"  Will asks, managing to sound hurt.  "Us?"  

Jen swats at him.  "As long as you're here, you can both help an old woman.  I've chickens to tend."

"You're not old!" I protest.  And she isn't, really, despite the streaks of grey just beginning to lighten her hair.  

Will just says, "Chickens.  Always chickens."

We make ourselves useful, in exchange for some more tea, and biscuits, and not having to carry the conversation.  She asks about Will's family, of course, and hears some few stories he didn't tell me, probably because I still don't know all the people involved in them.  There are nine siblings in Will's family; six boys and three girls.  I've met three, besides Will himself.  I can't really fathom the idea of growing up with so many children—even though the Evans' and Rowlands' had a hand in raising me as much as my own da, I still feel a bit cut off from things.  I like listening to him talk about his childhood, stories of noise and pranks and mischief.

But he gets tired of talking, after a while, and I've seen him sneaking looks at me sometimes, like there's something he wants to ask.  "Do you still play the harp much, Bran?"

"A bit."  Of course I do.  It's not the sort of thing one falls out of, but I can't expect him to understand that, really.  

"Play something for me?  It's been ages."

As if I would refuse?  I sit down at the instrument—it seems so much smaller than I remember it being.  I didn't give much thought about what I would play, just drew fingers across strings to wake them.  _A lullaby_, they said, and so we did.  

--_liquid birdsong of summer.  An old Welsh lullaby, gradually elabourated, filling out, pouring like High Magic_—

Somewhere during the song, I feel his hand come to rest on my shoulder, and his smooth baritone joins the harmonies of the harp and twines with it.  I don't know what words he's singing, and I don't think he does either, but the whole room trembles to life with the beauty of it.

"Well that was just lovely," Jen Evans says finally, when at last we've stopped and the last strains of the song have dissipated into the air.  "It's a pleasant surprise, it is, but I'm glad you came down, Will."

"I am, too," he says, and smiles at me over her head.

We start walking back, after that.  Will is quiet, a bit nostalgic I think, and in acknowledgement I drag him around to all the places I can remember us playing, as kids.  The memories are all a bit hazy—I remember being there, and his being there with me, but I can't call to mind what it was we might have played.  It probably doesn't matter, but it bothers me a bit.  

At one point I ask him, "Do you mind this?"

He blinks at me, confused.  "Mind what?"

"Missing...whatever you've got going on back at home.  It did all happen pretty suddenly."  I suppose I'm just wondering if I should be feeling guilty, dragging him down here just to wander around the hills with me, and play nursemaid while I sleep.

But he shakes his head, and his smile is genuine and shines out of his eyes.  "I don't mind at all.  I'll make up the work later, somehow."  He toes the ground with his shoe, awkward.  "I couldn't very well not come, after you asked."

And I just ask, "Why not?"

He doesn't answer right away, just steps closer—then his lips cover mine, soft and hesitant and undemanding.  Things fall into place, things I hadn't realised before.  Why it was Will that I rang up in the middle of the night, why I felt so comfortable when he was here.  Why he answered, when I called.  It feels right—like something I should have thought of before, but somehow hadn't.

And then he pulls away.  "Sorry," he says, a bit flatly.  "I just—well, I just thought you ought to know."  Silence, because he's waiting for me to say something, and I just don't know what to say.  After a moment he shrugs, as if none of it matters, even though we both know it does.  "Let's go on up to Craig yr—oh, whatever it's called—Bird Rock, all right?"

I nod, and it seems like even that ought to have more meaning to me, but I can't seem to find it.  I trudge up the mountain behind Will, just watching him walk.  I draw the charm out of my shirt, at one point, and rub my fingers along the edges of it.  It's warm, but that could just be because it's been against my skin, I suppose, and I've been walking all morning.

The awkwardness wears off after a while, and Will stops giving me those looks like he's not sure if he ought to say something more, or if I'm upset with him.  I'm not.  And though I didn't know what to do at first, I decide the best thing will just be to show him that nothing's different, that we're still the friends we were earlier this morning.  Yes, I know he kissed me, and I'm fairly certain I wanted to kiss him back, but we can deal with it later...small steps, after all.  And it seems to work.  By lunchtime I'm teasing him about turning into a city boy, and he's dropping clumps of grass on my head.

It's easy again, comfortable, the way it should be.

But maybe I notice him a little more than before.

We stay outside most of the day, because it's not raining, which is something to be treasured here in the spring.  The wind is crisp and clean, and Will repeats that he likes the way it smells.  He seems content to wander through the hills reliving old memories, and since it's a sort of holiday for both of us, we don't feel pressured to do anything more.  

"Do you remember?" we ask each other sometimes, when we think of something important.  

"Do you remember, we almost got caught up here, when there was that fire."

"Do you remember, here we were when John Rowlands let us help deliver the lambs, the first time."

"Do you remember—"

"What?"

A wistful, flyaway smile.  "Oh, nothing."

Night falls, and the awkwardness starts to creep back in.  I forge ahead, half pretending that nothing happened, half hoping something does.  I crawl into bed, and he climbs in slowly, like he's waiting for me to tell him to go somewhere else.  I wait for him to lie down, instead, and nestle alongside him, and rest my head on his chest.  Hesitantly, his fingers wrap around my wrist.  

"Are you sure this is all right?"  He thinks something has changed between us.  And maybe it has.

I don't want to move.  "Should I be worried about compromising my virtue?  You never bothered about it before."

Voice, breath, body, his fingers around my wrist—all are tight, tense.  "You were never lying on top of me before."

It's true, and maybe this isn't the best idea, but I can't seem to force myself to care.  "Maybe I just want to see how long that steel willpower of yours can hold out."

He surges up at that, rolling me onto my back and hovering over me, pinning me to the bed.  "Not very long at all, if you tease me like that."  He buries his face in the hollow of my neck, his lips burning wet kisses into my skin.  I gasp for breath as he pulls just a little bit away, his fingers gripping my arms.

"Bran," he murmurs, and there is something in his voice, some soft desperate longing, that I have never heard before.  "Please...don't say things like that unless you mean them...I don't think I could take it...just tell me to stop...."

That is the one thing I don't want to do.  Not with my entire body twisting into knots beneath him, my heartbeat crashing like thunder in my chest.  The universe is only just beginning to make sense, and nervous as he is, he is the reason for it.  "No, Will...please _don't stop._"

A moan, then, and a kiss—and with that I have surrendered to him.  Each hurried caress is a new drug, merging my senses til I can no longer distinguish one part of my body from another.  He pushes my t-shirt up over my head and it tangles in my wrists; he gives up on it and ducks his head to blaze a hot wet line down my chest.  There's an undercurrent of roughness in his touch, leaving marks on my skin, dark red and grey stark against the colourless white.  Yet it doesn't hurt, and while I know it marks me, I crave that, too.

We aren't talking, not with real words, at least.  Quick gasps and harsh, throaty moans are like inventing a new language of our own, one where sounds are answered with touch, and the mere pitch of our names can have a thousand meanings all their own.  

--_there fire shall fly_—

The charm he made for me burns where it lies on my chest.  His hair falling, brushing my skin, tickling—he pauses to push it back out of his eyes, the way he's always done for as long as I've known him, and just like always it falls right back.  He's got all my clothes off now, and I'm nervous and awkward at first, but there's such a hunger in his eyes that I can't be self-conscious for more than a moment.  Not when he's looking at me, touching me that way—hands sliding up and down my thighs, and all the way down to my ankles as he climbs over me, nestles in between my legs.  

Later, I think, later I will remember to ask him how he has learned these things, ways of touching and stroking that this hermit farm boy does not know.  I will ask.  But for now I will moan his name and beg him not to stop.  If there are rules for this game, I do not know them—if there are things I should do or say or a certain way I should move.  And I do not care.  My arms are stretched above my head, still wrapped in the t-shirt that I am no longer capable of untangling.  I try to keep from screaming when his kisses crawl up the inside of my thigh.  

"Will--!"

He smiles at me, his eyes smoky and half-lidded and hidden behind his hair.  His palms press into my hips, and I am only too conscious of his body, his position, they way he leans just a little against my leg. 

"I love you," he says softly—so matter-of-fact, as if it were not the only coherent phrase either of us has uttered since we began.  "I've loved you since I was twelve."

He gives me no chance to answer—only ducks his head, and gives one long slow stroke of his tongue along—oh God—my hips buck under him, but he presses me down into the bed—I am going to die or scream or explode, I can't feel the bed or the blanket, or anything but Will's soft warm mouth doing things to me that I had hardly ever dared imagine.  I can't feel my own voice, but the sound of it grates my ears; my eyes squeeze shut but the light overtakes them, pounding in my eyelids, flooding my body, bursting out of it.

--_and one go alone_-- 

My limbs are tingling, heartbeat thundering, as the light retreats.  I lie still and breathe, feeling the way each inhalation seeps through my pores.  I have no energy for anything more.  Disconnected from my body, I open my eyes.  Will hasn't moved either.  He's just dragging one hand across his mouth, a sort of quizzical, surprised expression on his face.  He notices me looking at him and props his chin up on one folded hand.  

I realise that I, and the linens, and probably Will too, are damp and sticky.  I also realise I have no idea what to say.

He breaks the silence.  "We, um, could both use a shower.  Probably some new sheets, too."

I nod.  I'm not sure I can convince my body to move that far.  I must look as dazed as I feel, because Will flashes me a grin and adds, "If you're up to it, that is."

"Um.  No.  I mean, yes.  I'm fine."  Better than fine.  Much better.  And I know I'm going to have to find a good way to articulate this to Will, and soon, before he starts thinking I didn't mean any of it.  Must be more encouraging.  

Must make legs stop shaking, so I can stand up.

"Give me a hand, won't you?" 

He watches me bemusedly.  "Confident of you, that.  What makes you think I'm any more stable than you are?"  It's a good point really, but he grabs my hand and pulls me up anyway.  I topple a little, getting my balance.  "Bran—you're okay with this, then?"

"_Do_.  Yes.  Very."  I make to kiss him, just to emphasise the point.  He turns his face away, his cheeks flushing pink.

"You don't want to do that, yet—need to brush my teeth—"  

Ah.  Now I'm blushing, too, and red has never been my best colour.  We stumble into the bathroom, and I start running the shower, and Will brushes his teeth.  "Going to wait til I'm done, or come in with me?"  I don't know yet what things it's safe to assume.

"You want me to?"

"Oh, get in here."  He strips down and joins me under the spray.  Only fair, really; he just got a good look at me naked, now it's my turn.  For all I was teasing him earlier, he's not really a flabby city boy at all—stockier than me, but he always was, all compact muscle and wind-roughened skin.  It's fascinating, too, the dark brown hair curling on his legs and between them, where I've almost never had any, and what there is, is too pale to see.  We do a lot of looking at each other, washing up.

"You've got bruises," he says apologetically.  "Sorry about that."

A look down at myself reveals he's right—but then I knew that.  Marks from his fingers, from his kisses, too dark and visible in my pale skin.  "It's all right.  I don't feel them, really.  Just bruise easy."  He nods, accepts this.

"Now what?" he asks, after a few minutes more.  His head is tipped back, one hand covering his eyes from the water.  One of us had to ask it, after all, and he seems to go back and forth between shyness and aggression.  I find I don't mind being reassuring, for now.

"We go back to bed?" I suggest.  I step into him, press him back against the cool, tiled wall—I touch his shoulder with my tongue, and mean to do more, but a yawn interrupts me in the middle of it.  I grumble.  "Well that wasn't quite what I meant.  But I suppose I'm tired."

"I am," he says frankly.  "Though I'd stay awake, if—well, you know.  If you were."

I do kiss him, this time, on the lips.  "Let's go to sleep then...we've got all tomorrow, too.  We can work out the details in the morning."  Relationships—if that is what we're starting here, and I am sure we are—need to have some things laid out, put into terms we can understand.  I don't think my brain is going to function much longer.  On the better side of things, I think I'll have something much more pleasant to dream about tonight than swords and red-eyed horses.

We dry off, and crawl back into bed.  We wrap around each other this time, arms and legs entwined, his head on the pillow and mine on his chest.  My last waking thought is of the way his fingers feel, stroking through my hair.

I have other dreams, though, and I feel more than ever as if I should understand them.  I dream of Cafall, and a harp, and a voice that echoes through the mountains as if they were singing.  Of a tall man, stately and sad, at the bow of a great ship, and another man, silver-haired and hawk-nosed, standing at his side.

_"Those bonds are outside even the High Magic, for they are the strongest things on earth.  ...Consider well...you will be the Pendragon no longer, ever..."_

And other words, more painful—

_"I shall go before long, and one day long hence Will will go, too."_

He can't leave me.  Not now.

_"—loving bonds—the strongest things on earth—"  _

I wake up slowly, my eyes stinging and heavy as if I were about to cry, something I haven't done in years.  Even in his sleep, Will's arms tighten around me.  

*****

translations:  

ymwybyddiaeth:  awareness

bore da:  good morning

Arian: silver

tyrd yma: come here

do:  yes


	3. gyda'ch gilydd

Awakening

by Ashura

pairing:  Bran/Will

disclaimer:  don't I wish I owned Will, Bran, and the whole Dark is Rising sequence?  But alas, I don't.  and I have no money to take, because I write fanfiction rather than doing things to get paid. 

archive: Arcadia (http://arcadia.envy.nu) 

notes: MORE LIME. And total cheesy sap-fest. (Because of course you didn't expect these things from me, right?)

Also if you like this sort of thing, check out the dir-slash list on Yahoogroups:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dir-slash/

**part iii:  gyda'ch gilydd**

"I can't exactly pick up and move to England, just like that."  I can't think of an immediate good reason why not, but Will apparently accepts it as sensible and just nods.  "And I know I can't ask you to stay here...there's nothing to stay for."

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far...I can think of something...."  He lifts his head just enough to press a kiss against my hair.  It's late morning, and the two of us are lying on the grass in front of the house.  He sprawls on his back, arms folded under his neck, and I'm stretched out next to him, head pillowed on his chest.  "You're right though, for now anyway.  I've got university to finish."

"What'll we do then?"  I would like to just stop time from flowing around us, if I could, so that not another minute would ever march forward til we were ready for it.

--_Time outside Time_—

Why do I have this feeling that we've done something like that once before?

Imagination getting the better of me.  I suppose I'm just clinging to anything that will make this morning drag on.  But after last night, some part of me is more sure than ever that there's something very important I've forgotten, and my mind is still struggling to get it back.

Will shifts a little under me, adjusting his position.  "See each other on holidays, like everyone else, for now anyway.  And when I finish, or if you decided you wanted to go somewhere else—well, we can deal with that when it happens, too.  If it comes down to it," he adds slowly, as if he's choosing his words oh-so-carefully, "I think I could live here, for a while...I can write an academic thesis on _the Mabinogion_ here as well as I can do in Bucks."

"Better, I should think."  It pleases me, surprises me a little, that he's writing on the mythological history of Wales.  But then, something deeper in me says, it makes sense, doesn't it?  Yet I don't know why.

Too much thinking.  That at least is easily solved.  I roll over, half atop Will, and lean in to kiss him.  We've been doing a lot of that, all morning, reveling in the newness and novelty of it, and incredible _rightness_, feeling out boundaries—so far nonexistent—and exploring unfamiliar sensations.  I like kissing Will. I like the way his eyes flutter closed whether he wants them to or not, the way his whole body tenses as if he's afraid to lose the moment, the way his tongue delves into my mouth like he's trying to find my soul in there somewhere.

"Everyone's coming back tomorrow," I say, when we've come to a pause again.  Only a few days ago I would have been relieved that my time alone was drawing to an end; now I'm not alone at all, and I wish they'd stay away a while longer.  "We won't have the house to ourselves anymore."

A wickedly playful grin teases at the corners of his lips.  "True, but we've got mountains, and acres of field, and a lake if we walk far enough...we'll find places to be alone when we want to."  He emphasises the point by freeing one hand, running teasing fingers from the nape of my neck and downward to my thigh.  

"Mm.  I think we'll have to stop in and prove we're still alive, now and then.  They'd get worried, if I kept you out and to myself as much as I'd really like."

Will chuckles. "Cold, too"

"What, you don't think we can keep each other warm...?"

He rolls over with a laugh, displacing me onto the grass.  "For a while we could.  Your turn to play pillow now, my back's getting sore."

We settle again.  He rests his head against my side, and I drape one arm across his chest.  "Do you mind if I don't tell my da about this right away?  I'm not sure...I mean, he's a deacon."

A sort of muffled laugh comes from behind Will's hair.  I expect he's imagining my father's reaction, same as I am.  "I don't mind.  It's probably best that way, really...small town and all."  

"You think your family'll mind?"

He shakes his head, and the motion of it tickles my stomach.  "No.  Especially if they know it's you."  I'm not sure how I'm supposed to take that, but he's still talking, so I don't dwell on it.  "I've got a brother who's an artist, another playing in a symphony, and a sister who's an actress...it's not like it's something they've never dealt with before.  And as they got used to my being a bit different when I was, oh, eleven, I don't really think there's anything else I could do or say now that would shock them."

"But you haven't told them yet."

"No, not yet."  He pauses, thoughtfully, drawing patterns on my palm with one slow finger.  "Was never any reason to...nobody important enough for them to meet."

That reminds me of something awkward.  "I meant to ask you something...it's a little odd."

Even though he's not facing me now I can see his gaze roll toward me, hear the dry amusement in his voice.  "Odd, from you?  Now that's new."

"Don't be a prat.  I was just curious—"  Now that I've started, I'm not entirely sure how to finish the question.  But I've got him listening, so I just let the words come out.  "You...seem to know more about how all this—"  I brush my hand along his chest, to indicate, but I think he would have caught it anyway—"works than I do."

"Ah," says Will.  There's a pause where neither of us says anything, and he adds, "I'm waiting for the question part, now."

"Well, how is that?"  This is not the easiest conversation I've ever had, by any means.  "I suppose I just want some idea what I'm dealing with...you read it, or made it up, or you've been out there experimenting?"

"Ah," he says again—shrugs, blushes.  "A bit."  It's what I expected, really.  I realise I don't like the idea of my Will being touched that way by anyone but me, and I tell him so.  He laughs.

"Believe me, if I'd had any idea you were interested...."  The words trail off to an apologetic smile.  "Really though, isn't it better if at least one of us knows what they're doing?"

If I weren't so comfortable where I was, I'd feel morally obligated to throw something heavy at him.  "If that's a complaint—"

"Absolutely not!"  I can't tell if he's serious or joking.  Then again, it probably doesn't matter.  The next thing he says _is_ serious, though.  "It's always been you...I told you that." 

"Good.  I'm finding it way too easy to get jealous, where you're concerned."

Another chuckle.  "That's nothing new.  You were positively nasty to Jane, the first time."

"Ah yes.  I remember.  Not that she was all sugar and spice either, mind.  At least I had an excuse—I didn't have all that many friends of my own, didn't like the idea that you might like somebody else more than me."  I remember the feelings well, but not the words, the whole scene is hazy.  Most of my memories of Will's trip that summer are hazy, and I find myself stretching for them again.  "How is she these days, anyway?  And Simon and Barney?  Do you still...?"

"Barney, sometimes.  He's in my department, behind a few years though.  He's still harbouring a fixation on King Arthur, so we run into each other."  I can't pinpoint exactly what the strange quality to his voice is now—wariness, almost.  Tension.  "Jane's married now, she lives in London somewhere.  Simon's a journalist in Canada."

"Everybody's moved on, then."

He puts into words what I haven't, yet.  "You haven't."

It's difficult to shrug while lying on one's back, so I don't try.  "Nowhere I really want to go."  I've already explained it all to him.  "Well—actually there is one place."  I push him off me so I can sit up.  "Come on."

"Hey—I was comfortable, there!"

"You'll be comfortable again later.  Come _on_, we're going for a walk."  He's grumbling as I haul him to his feet, but I'm too attached to this sudden new idea to listen to whining.  Before we start off I wrap my arms around his waist and pull him up close against me.  "I'll make it worth your while," I promise, savouring his quick intake of breath when I grind my hips against him.  

It's a fairly long trek, where I intend to take him, but I don't want to give away our destination yet.  Will senses that, I think, so after one quizzical look he just slips his hand into mine and walks alongside.  Truthfully I'm not even sure why I just got the urge to head as far back into my past as I can go, but it feels _right_, and in the past few days I've learned not to argue with intuition.  It adds even more to the Rightness when Arian comes bounding up to tag along.  

Me, and Will Stanton, and my silver dog, all going home.

I think he recognises the route after a while.  Something old and tired and sad slips into his expression, something that makes my heart twist and ache with wanting to make whatever's causing that look dissolve away.  

"Bran...."  He says it so quietly I almost don't hear him.  "We're going to the cottage, aren't we?"

"That's right."  I stop, though, and turn to face him, because there's something in his voice too heavy to ignore.  

"What for?"

At least that I have a ready answer for.  "Because nobody ever goes near the place, and I want you to show me every last thing you've picked up from whatever reading or thinking or experimenting you've been doing," I tell him boldly, and though he looks a little surprised, some of the lines ease from his face.  I pull my glasses off, even though it's too bright and the sunlight makes my eyes hurt a bit, because it seems cowardly somehow to hide behind them for this.  "If your next question is why there instead of just staying at home...I don't really have an answer for that.  It just occurred to me, and it feels right—the way ringing you up when I couldn't sleep felt right, or like last night felt right.  I feel like there's some big part of myself missing, and you're the only one who can put it back—I can't explain it, Will."  He's staring at me, and I can't make out the mix of emotions in his expression.  I slip the glasses back on, so I can see him better, but I still can't read his face.  "If it really bothers you, we can go back."

He shakes his head, and reaches out to slip one hand behind my neck, and kisses me.  "So be it," he says—he still sounds tired, but not nearly as sad.  And when he smiles, it brightens his whole face.  "Of course I don't mind.  Let's go."

The cottage I'm taking him to is where my da lived when I was born.  Not the place I was born—note the difference.  It's where he met my mother when she wandered out of the mountains with me in her arms.  A few days later she was gone, and I was his.  Maybe I wasn't born there, but it's still where my life started.

It's on Prichard land, not Evans, but that doesn't matter anymore.  Caradog Prichard—rotten bastard that he was—died some few years back, and his wife runs the place with the help of the men they've had hired on for ages.  She's not nasty the way he was—he'd happily have shot at Will and I if he caught us on his land, and he had a few times, but she doesn't care.  She doesn't do anything with the upper parts  anyway.

So it's been years since the last time anyone paid attention to this little place.  It's been empty for a long time, and it shows.  The door creaks when I try to ease it open.  There's a curtain of dust on the windowpanes, and a nest of baby birds in the corner, near the door.  The floor is rough, and covered with dust, with weeds breaking through the floorboards in places.

Neither of us say anything at first.  I wander through, staring at the walls, trying to evoke some memory of my youngest days.  What I really remember about this house though is coming back to it, when I was eleven—the first summer Will was here.  Prichard shot Cafall, and he was hunting for Pen, so we took him and hid him here.

I hadn't wanted to see Will, at first, not even for that.  I was angry at him.  Why?  He was the only friend I had at the time, and everything had been fine, up until—until what?—until Cafall.

_--part of a long pattern, like the stars and the sea.  And nobody could have played his part better._—

--_Go away.  Just go away._—

I turn to ask him if he remembers.  He's kneeling on the floor a few paces away, holding a smooth pale stone cupped in one hand.  The sadness has returned, it lines his face and makes him look so much older than twenty-one.  "Will—"

Startled, he looks up at me.  The creases on his face retreat as he offers a sheepish smile, slipping the stone into his jeans pocket.  "Sorry.  Was thinking about something, is all."

Arian nuzzles her face against his knee, whining.  And suddenly, looking into his face, I don't care what happened between us nine years ago, or what childhood traumas brought us to this point.  I don't even care what causes that pain in his eyes—I just want to make it go away.  Even if it's just for a while.

"Will, _cariad_...."  I take off the glasses again, slip them into a pocket.  He steps forward, and I cup his face and pull him close and kiss him hard.  I feel him melt.  His hands tangle in my hair, and then skim down my back, and mine slide under his shirt.  He lifts his arms, and I pull it over his head and toss it onto the floor.  My hands are so white against his tanned chest.  I look like a ghost.

I don't feel like a ghost.  

His mouth strays to my neck, nibbling, his tongue traces the line of my ear and I tremble.  Last night I lay under him and he touched me; today I am as active a partner in this as he is, and if I fumble a little sometimes, because I have never done this before—well he doesn't seem to mind, and I can learn very, very quickly.

Wrapped tight around each other we sink to the floor.  Will pushes our discarded shirts into a pile and lowers me onto my back atop them, his hands braced on each side of me, mouth and hands straying over my body.  I'm struggling with the buttons of his jeans, trying to push them down out of my way.  Somehow we get all of our clothes off—I hear a button pop, but I don't know whose it was.  And I don't care, because he's—doing those things with his mouth, again.  My fingers tangle in his hair, push his head down.

"Do you—sorry—_oh_!"

"No, it's—mmm—all right—"

And he's doing something else with his hand, and I can't see straight anymore and for all I know I'm floating five feet above the floor.  He climbs over me, pushes my legs up, and I clutch at him and want to cry because it _hurts_—and I know that if I told him to he'd stop, but I _don't want to stop_.  His face isn't sad anymore but blank, like this is all too much to process, his breath coming fast and ragged, my name on his lips, repeated, chanted.  

--_the mountains are singing_—

Sunlight filters in through the dirt-covered windows to speckle our skin with pallid, fading drops.  The world slows, and little by little all sensation fades, even the rhythm of Will's driving into me, and my grip on his damp skin.  

There was a ship, and they asked me to go away with them on it.  But I didn't go.  I wanted to stay with Will, even then.  I didn't want to leave him here alone, as I knew he must be—but he was alone anyway in the end, because the price for my staying was to leave the memory of it all behind. 

The sunlight is fading, and the windows are grey now.  I remember the tree, and the sword and the ship and the man to whom they both belonged—regal and tall, and sad the way Will sometimes looks sad, and _I know why_.

I remember what we argued about, when Prichard shot Cafall.

I remember the Riders and the Sleepers and the Dark.

I remember a horn and a harp.  I remember a mirror and a train and a journey, and the stuff of nightmares all behind me.

And I remember how it was Will, all the time, beside me.  Off to save the world, and though there were six of us really, he and I were closer to each other than the rest.

And now we're closer than ever, and he's whispering that he loves me, and I'm breathing him in, and we're both about to fall.  It's too bright, and I _know_, but I cannot see.

--_outside even the High Magic—the strongest things on earth—_

--_strongest things on_—

We cry out together.

The light recedes, and I can feel the soreness overtaking my body, the rough gravel digging into my back—the brilliant fading ecstasy of what Will and I have just shared, of what I've been given back.  He's crouched next to me, his hand on my damp forehead, his soft eyes worried. 

"Are you all right?"

I realise suddenly—he doesn't know.  He was joined to my body but not my mind; he didn't see everything crashing down around me to surround and fill me.  

He doesn't know that I understand now, the wistfulness I saw so often in him, and that there's no need for it anymore.

"I remember," I tell him, and watch his eyes widen in surprise, in desperate hope.  "I remember everything."

He meets my eyes and holds them, unmoving.  "How?"

I touch his face, brush limp brown hair away from his eyes.  "I don't know.  The place, or us, or everything...does it matter...Old One?"

A smile breaks across his face, and this time there is no secret sorrow behind it.  "No, I guess not."

He rolls off me, and helps me sit up.  We brush bits of gravel and pebbles off our skin.  "I'm sorry for leaving you alone so long.  I didn't want to."

He lifts my hand and presses a kiss to my palm.  "Nothing to be sorry for.  You weren't really given a choice, in that part."  His eyes narrow, flicker toward the window, and he hands me my balled-up shirt.  "You realise it's raining."

"Did we do that?"  It's not outside the realm of possibility that what we've being doing here tipped off something in the weather.  He just shrugs, pulling on his jeans.  

"Don't know.  Maybe.  Whether we did or not, we have to walk back in it.  What the—I'm missing a button, now."  His hands fly up in frustration and he starts to laugh.  

"What's so funny?"  I demand, though it's quite an effort not to start laughing myself.  

He winks at me.  "This has been one hell of a trip," he says, grabbing the tail of my shirt and pulling me against him.  "I guess I'm just wondering if there are any more surprises in store."

I think it is probably not a surprise when I kiss him, but it's a good excuse, anyway.

"Love you," he whispers into my hair, once we've stopped.  

"I love you too.  It's always been us, hasn't it?"

He nods.

"Looks like it always will be, too.  Now I'm really stuck with you, I suppose."  He makes to push me, and I stick out my tongue at him like a child.  From further up Cadair Idris, a clap of thunder sounds.  Arian whines, huddled in the corner.  "We'd better get started back, or we'll end up stuck in here til it blows over.  And much as I like being alone with you, I'd rather do it somewhere warm, with food and tea."

He nods, lacing up his shoes.  "Stupid of us to not bring jackets anyway.  Oh well."  He beams up at me—I don't think he's stopped smiling since—well, since.  "I don't really mind, somehow."

So we hold hands, and run as far as we can til we start to lose our breath.  By the time we get home we're sopping wet, hair plastered to our heads, clothes dark with the rain and clinging sodden to our bodies.  And much later we are warm and dry again, and full of food and tea and each other, curled together in my bed for one night more.  

Maybe two...I never did ask just how long he could stay.

So I do now.  "A few days more," he says, nestling his face into my chest.  "I told them I had a family emergency that needed dealing with, and that's why I had to leave so sudden....they won't expect me back right away."  His smooth fingers stroke gently through my hair.  "Maybe you could come up next time, you think?  Not right away, because I'm going to have to make up what I'm missing, and I'd never get anything done if you were around—but in a couple of weeks."

"I'd like that."  I savour this, the way his hair smells and his skin feels, the way the blankets fall when there are two bodies beneath them instead of one.  "I've always missed you, after you leave, but this time even more, I think."

"Me too."  He lifts his face, though, and his eyes are shining.  "Just knowing you're here, though, and you remember—I won't feel like I'm all alone in the world, anymore."

I wrap my arms around him tight.  "Not ever," I promise, and this oath is forged in a love stronger than any magic the world has seen.  "Never alone again."

[fin.]

****

translations:

gyda'ch gilydd:  together

cariad:  love, dear (term of affection)


End file.
